The first round of the new British Touring Car Championship gets underway at Brands Hatch today. Not being able to make the trek over to the magnificent Kent circuit I was hoping to catch the action on TV.

Last year live coverage of the entire weekend – support races and all – was on the excellent Motors TV satellite channel.

But now the live race deal has been sold to Setanta Sports – meaning you’ll have to cough up a subscription of over ?âÔÇÜ?é?ú15 per month on top of a Sky subscription to see the races live.

Setanta don’t offer a ‘pay per view’ option so you can pay less and just see the BTCC races. And it’s not as if they have a great roster of other motor sport events to make it worthwhile, unless NASCAR floats your boat (it bores me to tears).

The afternoon race coverage has also been bumped from ITV1 to ITV3 – bad new for race fans without digital receivers.

It’s a tremendous shame that the series has badly compromised what was an excellent TV deal last year.